After having served as the logistics manager of Tiendamía, Peter Saravia took over as the company’s global director of logistics. in dialogue with Ambittold what are the main challenges of the company, recognized that they are exploring new markets, analyzed the strategy to recruit talent and addressed the current situation of the industry ecommerce.
Journalist: What are the challenges of Tiendamia in Uruguay and in the region?
Pedro Saravia: The main one is to navigate between the different situations that arise in the different countries of Latin America. We know that things happen and that forces us to permanently adapt to different scenarios.
Q.: What are the main demands of users in LATAM?
.: There are many. Today companies must adapt to the world of customers and eliminate border barriers to lead virtuality. In the region we are very used to online cross border purchases, that is, buying abroad, but we are beginning to sell abroad. In this context, we focused on developing a platform so that those of us in Latin America can also sell mainly to countries in the region, but in a second step also to the United States and Europe.
Q.: Has ecommerce in Uruguay had the necessary robustness to withstand the post-pandemic digitization boom?
: Before the pandemic, very few bought through the digital channel, much less cross border. In the post-pandemic, there was unexpected exponential growth and luckily we had the ability to adapt quickly. Most companies fell short.
Q.: Is there enough talent in the market to supply the demand of the companies?
: That’s a whole topic. After that growth I’m talking about, we had to go out and hire talent, but it was scarce in the region. Even to this day it is still a problem to get qualified personnel.
Q.: How do you recruit talent?
: We had to change the methodology. Today the search is 100% remote, which allows us to contract without borders. We currently operate in 10 countries and yet we have people working for Tiendamia in 25 countries.
Q.: How many people does Tiendamía employ?
: We are more than 400 in the entire operation
Q.: Are you exploring new markets?
: One of our pillars is to open more markets. We have a light structure because we have no assets. We outsource all the logistics, so opening a country is “light”.
Source: Ambito
